Car Registration Stickers Failing Crucial Test

Car registration and inspection stickers are not sticking to windshields

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This parked car right outside Rockefeller Center has a registration picture peeling.

Even when drivers followed instructions on New York vehicle registration stickers, chances are they still won't stick to windshields, creating a truckload of frustration.

Some drivers filed complaints with the DMV, while others press the stickers against the windshield hoping it would stick one day.

At least two million of the nine million stickers issued this year for vehicle registration are not adhering to the glass, according to the New York Times. The problem also plagues state inspection , as 2.5 million of the 13.5 million.

“They don’t stick,” said Daniel Feldman, 38, Brooklyn business executive told the paper. “I’ve had this discussion with, like, a thousand people. It’s funny — I just got a new car and I’m already dreading getting the next sticker.”

But not everyone is that bothered by it.

Steve Gender, 54, a cameraman from Orange County, New York, told NBC New York there are bigger problems to worry about.

“If that trivial thing bothered me, I’d probably have committed suicide already driving through all that traffic,” he said.

And these problems are occurring at a time when the state is facing growing budget deficit. A 25 percent increase in registration fee has already taken effect. And New York City drivers and those in surrounding counties also must shell out a extra $50 surcharge to aid the Metropolitan Transportation Authority in closing the budget gap.

Meanwhile on State Street near the Capitol in Albany, an unscientific study that showed that seven of the 13 cars on the block from New York had sticker issues, according to the paper of record. There were also two cars from out-of state on the block.

Police departments have been asked to be more forgiving to drivers who have stickers ready to peel off. “A lot of it depends on the discretion of the officer,” NY state police spokesman Sergeant Kern Swoboda told the New York Times.

A ticket would probably be issued if evidence of a sticker doesn’t exist, traces of tape or adhesive are on the windshield, the sergeant added.

Those tickets cost $50 to $100 for inspection stickers and $100 for registration stickers -- not including an $80 surcharge.

The problem has gotten so bad that even the Department of Motor Vehicles commissioner, David J. Swarts, has resorted to tape to secure the stick in his wife’s car, the Times reported.

Officials at the Department of Motor Vehicles are embarrassed and puzzled.

“Why both happened at the same time -- two different vendors, two different processes, two different types of stickers -- it’s really a bizarre occurrence,” Swarts told the Times. “When people are paying fees and fees are going up, it makes people frustrated and angry.”

Many drivers here in New York were stuck with this problem when two separate Chicago-based firms that produced the stickers failed to discover the defective glue adhesive.

The contract for the registration stickers was approximately $1 million, the Times reported. RR Donnelly was the only bidder and had produced the stickers in the past. The state has not said whether it would continue doing business with the company, but negotiations are still in place from compensation over the defective stickers

SecureMark Decal had a $660,000 deal to make the inspection stickers, but the state said it will not continue to do business with the inspection sticker maker. The company will provide 1.4 million replacement stickers free of charge.